The Orphanmaster (19 page)

Some sort of carnival or market day held sway on the lee side of the fort. Raeger had assured Drummond that no more favorable time could be had for a guided reconnaissance of the town. “The beast fair,” Raeger called
kermis
, an autumn festival and trading opportunity. A time when colonists bartered cattle, and became beasts themselves.

“The folk go a little unbuckled during the fair,” Raeger told him. “They indulge themselves in holiday play after the labor of the harvest and commit all kinds of drunken silliness. If you would ever want to steal a
kiss from a pretty miss—say, for example, Blandine van Couvering over there—the beast fair would be the time to do it.”

They had rounded the corner of the fort and were thrust into the noise and raucous anarchy of the harvest market.

Blandine was indeed there, in the midst of the crowd, but Drummond could hardly recognize her.

They had not seen each other since two mornings past, when the four moongazers had wandered into the deserted town at dawn, tired but merry after their rapturous night.

Drummond and Blandine and Antony and William felt as though they had just emerged from under a spell cast by the heavens. The full moon, setting in the west, still hung before them, a mystery realm, a few of whose secrets they had unlocked that night.

The woman who Drummond saw at the fair seemed a different creature altogether. Blandine looked a wonder, dressed to be seen in layers of scarlet, purple and green, with a black steepled hat that made Drummond think of the piled-high hairstyles of the French court.

But it wasn’t just her costume. She struck a formal pose, mincing forward step by step, her hand outstretched and placed archly in the grasp of her companion, an equally up-rigged colonial gentleman.

The two of them were characters in a dumb show. Goggle-eyed crowds of wrights, rude boys and rustics surged around them. A few other high-caste couples, similarly accoutred and stylized, passed through the fair, swans gliding over a lake crowded with wood ducks and widgeons.

Blandine and her partner stepped delicately aside to allow for passage of a yoke of oxen, hawked for sale by its drover.

Drummond almost laughed out loud. It was as though Blandine were playing at an appearance for the royal court at Whitehall. But she should be careful not to step with her pretty little beribboned shoes into the pile of ox dung just dumped in her path.

Drums beat to announce the opening of
kermis
. Already boys in yellow stockings and monkey jackets roamed the market, eager to spend the few stuivers given to them by their parents at just the right food stall or the most enticing of the spectacle booths.

Touts, mongers and hawkers lured customers to the booths with flatulent blasts of brass trumpets. Ribbons, bunting and flowers garlanded every surface. The fair lacked a maypole, but that was another festival, another season. The atmosphere of frolic was the same.

Drinking and food counters lined the fairway, offering wine stiffened with sugar, ham pasties and sweet pies, cakes with chips of candied citrus peel.

“Here it is, here it is,” the waffle man called. He had no need of a brass trumpet. The wafting aroma of his hot fried cakes drizzled with honey ensured that he and his missus had all the customers they could handle.

Most of the smells of the fair were not nearly so fragrant, and the stench of the assembled pigs, sheep, goats, oxen, cattle and milk cows mingled with the yeasty odor of spilled beer.

Spectator booths lodged against the fort wall, away from the public promenade. A fire-eater, a dwarf. One booth displayed the invitation “See the Jew!” charging a stuiver for country gawkers to stick their heads through a curtain and gaze upon a member of the tribe, complete with a fur hat and trailing side curls. The money, it must be said, went toward the establishment of a temple.

Blandine and Kees Bayard conducted their promenade north through the market to the parade ground, turned and made another promenade south, stilt-stepping all the while.

Blandine encountered the rare exhibition of a miniature human, not more than a foot tall. Dressed in a tunic and cap, the homunculus danced and hissed atop a cabinet, a thin collar and metal chain around his neck.

“Hello, little one,” cooed Blandine. The creature had tufts of cream-colored fur around its grimacing, disapproving visage, and tore apart an apple with childlike fingers.

“Just a monkey,” said Kees. Since he had traveled to Suriname on one of his ships, Blandine noticed that he affected not to find anything wondrous anymore.

“He’s a little man, isn’t he?” Blandine said. She reached out to touch the paw of the beast, but Kees pulled her back.

“It’s dirty,” he said.

*   *   *

In the Doden Acker, the town cemetery off the Broad Way north of the parade ground, a dozen children went unsupervised that afternoon, their nearby parents letting them run free. The kids played Deadman’s Bluff among the graves.

“Deadman, Deadman, come alive,” their singsong child voices called. “Come alive when we count to five. One, two, three, four, five.”

The blindfolded “Deadman,” Bo Dorset, stretched his six-year-old arms in front of him, grabbing at the air as the other girls and boys weaved and dodged away from him.

Suddenly young Bo blundered into a pair of tree trunks. There were the solid adult legs of Mister Martyn Hendrickson, planted right in the middle of the game. He towered above the boy, charming, smiling and totally smashed. His drinking pals Ludwig Smits and Pim Jensen stood next to him, holding him up and being held up in turn.

“You know what this means, Luddy,” Martyn said.

“Whut?” Ludwig Smits said.

Hendrickson tugged the blindfold from Bo’s head. “It means I’m the Deadman.” He slipped the rag over his eyes. Ludwig and Pim howled with laughter.

As soon as the blind dark descended, an old childhood rhyme came back to Martyn, one his mother used to sing to him as a baby. When he was a child, Martyn lost his eyesight to fever for a week. During that time, his mother perished of the same fever.

For the next few minutes, as the yelling children scattered, a sightless Martyn did the Deadman. He tripped and tumbled funnily against gravestones, chasing his prey. He had to leave off once to vomit, but manfully returned to the game. The drunken man lunged, knocking over laughing children like bowling pins, grabbing at them, missing.

Finally the blindfolded Martyn managed to tackle nine-year-old Greetje Breit. The girl giggled uncontrollably, thinking it was fun.

“Moeder, moeder, moeder,”
Martyn babbled. Mother, mother, mother. Beneath the dirty rag tied around his eyes, Martyn shed tears. He collapsed upon Greetje, suffocating her until she screamed. Pim and Ludwig peeled him off her.

The contagious shrieks of the children passed to the adults, who joined in the merriment.

K
ees Bayard had myriad things on his mind. For one, he wished to slip away from the fair and nuzzle with Blandine. The rules were relaxed for
kermis
time, and Kees meant to take advantage.

But at the same time, he needed to stay right where he was, at the carnival. Criers had just announced the commencement of Kees’s primary reason for being there, his main event, the goose-pulling challenge. His uncle had in fact outlawed goose-pulling several years ago. But the edict had not stopped the practice, merely thinned out the ranks of Kees’s competition.

To the north of the market square, in the parade concourse across from the large, fine dwelling-houses of Stone Street, the games were about to begin. The test: to gallop a mount full-speed from one end of the course to the other end, where a live goose hung upside down, dangling ten feet in the air. Grab at the angry, squawking bird’s head.

The colony declared whoever pulled the bird down to be king of
kermis
fair. There were other contests at the festival—”kitten in a casket” was a favorite—but goose-pulling reigned supreme. At times the bird’s legs snapped off at the halter tied around its feet, other times a contestant would pull its head off its body in a great spray of blood and feathers.

Festival organizers made the snatch more difficult—devilishly hard, in fact—by liberally greasing the animal with bear fat. Onlookers and contestants alike had to be drunk enough to appreciate the spectacle.

“I drink the bottle of fire,” repeated a beered-up farmer, staggering in circles beneath the suspended goose. “Bring me the bottle of fire!”

Kees found it delightfully easy to meet the game’s challenge. Without bragging about it, he was made to pull the goose. Kittens! Pah. He had left off killing cats as a young boy.

“Wish me luck,” he said, grinning at Blandine as he prepared to organize his mount. He would ride Fantome, a coal-black charger of which he was inordinately proud, a horse he swore had Spanish (other times, Moorish) blood. For the fair, he dressed Fantome in colors and braided its mane with ribbons.

“Your good luck is very bad luck for the goose,” Blandine said. She had watched Kees at this ritual many times before.

Edward Drummond appeared at her side. “Mister Drummond,” she said, surprised. The Red Lion innkeeper stood with him.

“Raeger,” Kees said, shaking hands.

“My friend and compatriot, Edward Drummond,” Ross Raeger said. Drummond bowed to the director general’s nephew.
Of course
, he thought,
the girl would have some bright boy by her side
. They probably thought of marriage.

Kees looked curiously at Blandine. “I met Mister Drummond at the Lion,” she said, stammering.

“We share an interest in astronomy,” Drummond said.

“Are you a horseman, Drummond?” Kees asked. “You should take a run at the goose.” The Englisher stared most insolently at Blandine, Kees thought, and he had an urge to best the man at mounted combat.

“Goose-pulling,” Raeger explained.

“Oh, I know goose-pulling well,” Drummond said. “I spent a long while in the Low Countries, where there are quite a lot of geese.”

“So, then, you wish to ride? I will lend you a mount,” Kees said.

“I prefer other prey,” the Englishman said, still gazing at Blandine.

She raised her eyes to him. In truth, Drummond had so wearied of killing and death on the battlefield that he no longer enjoyed even butchering small game. Geese—and kittens—were safe with him. Blandine van Couvering, on the other hand, might not be.

On closer inspection, the woman’s costume looked much less outlandish, even charming. A crimson petticoat peeked out beneath a looped-up violet apron, raised to display the tease of red silk. Above a vivid green and blue waistcoat, her fine, full breasts showed amid a burst of white lace. Fat curls fell around her face.

Drummond noticed that although she still grasped Kees’s arm, Blandine’s eyes strayed again and again to his.

“I’ll lay a wager on your win,” Raeger said to Blandine’s fidgety suitor, who was evidently anxious to leave her side and climb onto his waiting steed.

“I’ll bet the goose,” Drummond said.

Kees judged the Englisher an insolent rounder. “I’ve been king of the fair three years in a row,” he said, hating to have to spell it out, then realizing the claim meant nothing to the man.

“Good-bye, Mister Drummond,” Blandine said, extending her hand. They shook. Seen side by side with Kees, the Englisher did not measure up. He appeared old. What had she been thinking?

Kees disliked his girl’s recently adopted habit of public handshaking. He performed a curt bow and stalked off with Blandine trailing behind him.

“Very pretty, as we said,” Raeger remarked to Drummond, watching them go. “And if one had the bad luck to fall in love with her, she’d be downright beautiful.”

“Fall in love with any woman, and suddenly she’s irresistible,” Drummond said. “Your luck doesn’t even have to be bad.”

“Oh-ho, Mister Drummond is already far gone,” Raeger said, shaking his head in mock sadness.

Kees located Fantome, the stallion trembling with eagerness, knowing what was about to happen. “What I should have done,” Kees said to Blandine, “was to take the man’s stinking wager.”

Blandine buttoned his waistcoat, preparing him for battle. “Don’t think on it now,” she said soothingly. “In a moment you will be king of the fair again, and nothing will matter.”

“I do adore you, Blandina,” Kees said. “In spite of all.”

He left her without a word of farewell, and rode to goose.

Blandine assumed her place in the gallery of spectators, on the parade ground in front of Pieter Laurensen’s majestic stone dwelling-house.

“Boom,” came a voice from behind her, and Blandine felt a swat to her backside.

“Just me,” said Pim as she turned around.

Pim Jensen attended school with Blandine before leaving at the age of fourteen for work at his father’s tannery. He had by then proved himself a great fighter, but no scholar. He stood smirking at her, a long-stemmed pipe tucked through his jaunty yellow hatband.

“You’re looking fine today,” he said. Blandine had dressed with an eye not for the leering likes of Pim, but for Kees (and Drummond, too?). She
remembered all the times Pim had tried to force a kiss in the schoolroom. The boy was a menace.

“Blandine,” Pim said, “let me sing a little song into your ear.”

She didn’t want to answer him.

“A lot of people,” Pim said, his words sounding rehearsed, “a whole lot of people have a problem with you having a problem.”

Blandine had no patience for this. There were times when the settlement was just too small. “For heaven’s sake, what are you talking about?” she said.

She saw Mally and Lace across the square. They watched over cages made of bent willow branches, selling robins they had captured. Robins were always in demand, they brightened one’s
groot kamer
so with their
cheerlup-cheerlup
song and orange-red breasts.